Our Board
We are passionate about building technology to honor the human right to education.
Experience That Guides Us
Navigator Labs is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to honor the human right to education. In addition to providing governance, the Board of Directors is dedicated to and fully support NLab's mission.
Board of Directors
Nancy Butler Songer, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Nancy Butler Songer is a Distinguished University Professor and Dean of the College of Education at University of Utah. Dr. Songer is an expert in science education and learning technologies with particular emphasis on the assessment of science knowledge and the design of learning environments that emphasize critical thinking in science. Songer’s work in educational assessment draws from the realization that students’ complex science knowledge development was not well represented in off-the-shelf assessments. Songer is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and she is the recipient of both a National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship by President William J. Clinton and a United States of America Department of Education Promising Educational Technology Award. Prior to Drexel, Songer was a professor at the University of Michigan for eighteen years where she conducted the majority of her research in conjunction with the Detroit Public Schools.
Kenji Hakuta, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Kenji Hakuta is an Emeritus Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His areas of teaching and research are bilingualism, second language acquisition, education policy, and social and experimental research. He worked on standards-based reform and has provided recommendations to the Clinton Administration. He created the English Language Learner (ELL) Leader Network at Stanford which brings together leaders from rural districts in California. He has authored several books including The Science and Psychology of Second Language Acquisition and Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism. Prior to Stanford, he was the Founding Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at the University of California, Merced. He has also taught at Yale University and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He received his BA Magna Cum Laude in Psychology and Social Relations, and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, both from Harvard University.
Michelle Rodriguez
Navigator Labs USA
Michelle Rodriguez has been dedicated to students in urban and rural, low socio-economic districts for over 25 years with a focus on fragile student populations. She is the Superintendent of Pajaro Valley Unified since January 2017, where she has implemented many new innovative programs, such as Footsteps2Brillance, Latino Youth Film Institute, and expanded Dual Immersion Program. She comes from Santa Ana Unified, the 6th largest district in California. As the Assistant Superintendent, K-12 Teaching and Learning, of Santa Ana Unified, she oversaw 11 divisions, including Curriculum and Instruction. She led the creation of digital content that is being used at SAUSD’s first competency-based school, Advanced Learning Academy, and Open Campus, the district’s first virtual high school. She plans to bring personalized learning to Pajaro Valley Unified and accelerate student achievement so that all students become 21st Century graduates prepared for college and career.
Prasad Ram, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Prasad Ram (aka Pram) is the Founder, CEO of Gooru. Previously, Dr. Ram was a researcher at Xerox PARC where he invented Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, CTO of Yahoo, India where he led the development of Yahoo Media platform, and Director of Engineering and Research at Google where he led projects on Google Maps and was the R&D head for Google India for five years. At Gooru, Dr. Ram has led the development and implementation of Gooru Navigator, which has a reach of over 20M learners across K12, skills training and professional learning worldwide. Dr. Ram has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA.
Gerard Hanley, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Gerard Hanley is VP of Learning and Instruction for Gooru. As a professor of cognitive psychology, Gerry has led research and application programs in teaching, learning, and technology for 35 years at the California State University, the largest 4-year higher education institution in the U.S. At MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) and SkillsCommons, Gerry has led the development and sustainability of international, open online libraries of free teaching and learning resources for education and workforce development while serving as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Technology at Cal State. He received his BA, MA, and a PhD in Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook.
Shalini Urs, PhD
Navigator Labs India
Dr. Shalini Urs has spent more than four decades in teaching, research, and building digital learning systems. Believing in the power of technologies to enhance learning, she began putting her research to work by taking up projects such as HyperCAL (Hypertext-based Computer Aided Learning in 1993. She pioneered the Electronic Thesis and Dissertations (ETD) movement in India with her Vidhyanidhi eScholarship portal in 2000. Dr. Urs has been a Fulbright scholar and a visiting professor at the Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, USA; an adjunct faculty at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB) and a visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. Taking a 360-degree view of information, she has researched on issues ranging from the theoretical foundations of information sciences to Informatics. She has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and prestigious academic conferences and also edited five books published by Springer. Dr. Urs has won many awards—including the NDLTD – Adobe Leadership award in 2004; Emerald Research Fund Award 2007-08. She was awarded the Mortenson Distinguished Lecturer 2010 by the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA.
Board of Advisors
John Seely Brown, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
John Seely Brown is a visiting scholar at USC and the independent co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge. Previously, he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He was deeply involved in the management of radical innovation and in the formation of corporate strategy and strategic positioning of Xerox as The Document Company. John has also received a few honorary degrees along the way, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Industry Hall of Fame. In 2009, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
M. S. Krishnan, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. M. S. Krishnan (“Krishnan”) is the Associate Dean Global Initiatives, Accenture Professor of Computer Information Systems and Professor of Technology and Operations at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He has co-authored the book “The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value with Global Networks” with Professor C. K. Prahalad (late). The Economist and Business Week magazine named this book as one of the Best Books on Innovation in 2008. Dr. Krishnan received his degrees in Mathematics and Computer Applications from the University of Delhi, India, and a PhD in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA in 1996. He was awarded the ICIS Best Dissertation Prize for his Doctoral Thesis on “Cost and Quality Considerations in Software Product Management”.
Zachary Pardos, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Pardos is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in the School of Information and Graduate School of Education. His focal areas of study are knowledge representation and personalized supports leveraging big data in education. He earned his PhD in Computer Science at WPI and comes to UC Berkeley after a post-doc at MIT RLE & Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). At UC Berkeley he directs the Computational Approaches to Human Learning (CAHL) research lab and teaches courses on data mining and analytics, digital learning environments, and machine learning in education.
Xiangen Hu, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Xiangen Hu is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at The University of Memphis (UofM) and senior researcher at the Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS) at the UofM and is professor and Dean of the School of Psychology at Central China Normal University (CCNU). Dr. Hu received his MS in applied mathematics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, MA in social sciences and Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Hu is the Director of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Partnership Laboratory at the UofM, and is a senior researcher in the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior.
Barry Fishman, PhD
Navigator Labs USA
Dr. Barry Fishman is an Associate Professor at the School of Education and School of Information at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Barry was the recipient of the University of Michigan Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize (2010), the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies (2001) and the Pattishall Junior Faculty Research Award from the University of Michigan (2003). He received his AB from Brown University in English and American Literature, his MS from Indiana University in Instructional Systems Technology, and his PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern University.
Sriram Viswanathan
Navigator Labs USA
Sriram Viswanathan is the Founding Managing Partner of IndusAge Partners — a technology venture fund established in 2013 that focuses on accelerating the monetization of innovation-led products & platforms globally. In his last role within Intel, he was the Vice President of the Intel Architecture Group (IAG) and General Manager of Intel’s Incubation and Innovation Group. Sriram is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Intel Achievement Award and has also been awarded Intel Divisional Awards on numerous occasions. He has served on the Kofi Annan Committee for UNICT and has played an advisory role to the State Department and White House. He is currently a Board Member of Clairvolex, QuadGen Wireless, and CloudLeaf. He is also Senior Advisor to ATIC (Mubadala) and Global Foundries and a Strategic Board Advisor to Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) — a global IT services firm. He is an Advisory Board Member of Aravind Eye Hospitals in India and the Keck Graduate Institute. Sriram has an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Business (1997) and has degrees in physics, computer science and automation from the American College and the Indian Institute of Science respectively.
Sreeja
Navigator Labs India
Sreeja is the founder and Chief Functionary of India Education Collective (IEC), a national level organisation engaging with State governments in India on impacting Quality of Education in Government schools. IEC works across nine states focusing on a systemic approach to reimagining schools into high quality, community owned institutions of learning.
Prior to starting IEC in 2015, she was the CEO & Secretary of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and was involved in the expansion of the Foundation’s work in the domain of Education.
She was the Founder-Secretary of Prajayatna, a national level organization focusing on systemic issues of education reform and was its Chief Functionary for almost a decade. While in Prajayatna, she has been integral in developing the core approach to structural change in Education Governance and in pioneering a Capability based learning approach in classrooms. Prior to that she was one of the key coordinators of a national movement against child labour- the ‘Campaign Against Child Labour’(CACL).
During her engagement with child rights and education in the past 26 years, she has been focusing on developing structures and processes towards a redefined paradigm in learning, teacher professional learning and aspects of decentralization of education governance.
Sreeja is an Ashoka Fellow.
Sridhar Mitta, PhD
Navigator Labs India
Dr. Sridhar Mitta’s 45 years of professional experience in IT industry can be summarized in three words: Technology. Business. Entrepreneurship. Dr. Mitta spearheaded R&D in the IT industry to design unique minicomputer systems that are suitable for the Indian market by using microprocessor technologies. He has blended his R&D skills with business acumen to come up with products and services that met industry needs and at the same time were commercially viable. Dr. Mitta is currently the founder of NextWealth Entrepreneurs. Bangalore. NextWealth is a unique IT company that helps its global clients to gain insights from their data by blending human touch with digital technologies. Dr. Mitta is also Founder of e4e in India that supported budding entrepreneurs from India to get access to famed Silicon Valley infrastructure in the US. Dr. Mitta was the first employee of Wipro’s IT business and spearheaded its growth into many businesses as CTO for 20 years from 1980. He founded EnThink Inc. in Santa Clara, US to monetize semiconductor IPs developed at Wipro.
Dr. Mitta received a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Master’s from IIT/Kharagpur and MS & PhD from Oklahoma State University, US. He was later inducted into CEAT Hall of Fame at the same University.
Priti Agarwal
Navigator Labs USA
A core team member of Gooru for many years now transitioned to an advisory board member. Priti is an experienced finance manager with a demonstrated history of working in the e-learning industry. Skilled in internal audit, corporate finance, accounting, tax, and management. Strong operations professional with a CPA focused in accounting from California Board of Accountancy.